when was aswad formed?

“It is with deepest regret and profound loss that we have to announce the passing of our brother Angus ‘Drummie’ Gaye,” the band said. “Drummie has left us to join our ancestors and leaves a huge void both personally and professionally.”

Aswad, the trio of Angus Gaye, Brinsley Forde and Tony Robinson, were the first reggae band in the UK signed to an international label, Island Records, in the 1970s, and swiftly became a classic British reggae act creating 15 albums in two decades.

Beloved for international hits Don’t Turn Around and Give A Little Love, Aswad also contributed to the Free Nelson Mandela campaign with their chart hit Set Them Free, according to their management, Spaine Music.

“Aswad are still very relevant in the 21st century as can be seen by the many festivals they appear on both in the UK and around the world,” Spaine Music said.

“Aswad, after more than 25 years, are still the purveyors of the UK reggae scene and will continue to be way into the next millennium.”

Born to Grenadian parents in London, Gaye was a former pupil at Holland Park school, according to the Mirror.

Described as “much loved and respected” by his family, friends and peers, the band said further information would be given in due course, and asked for privacy for Gaye’s family and the band at this “heartbreaking time”.

Aswad (a name derived from the Arabic word for “black”) was formed in the Ladbroke Grove area of West London in 1974.  Along with contemporaries Matumbi, The Cimmarons, and Black Slate, the band was among the first home grown acts to prove that Caribbean music could successfully take root in Europe.  In its early years, Aswad was the only British group to record and/or perform in concert with several top Jamaican artists, including Burning Spear, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer.  (Bunny, in fact, was known to refer to Aswad as the “Young Wailers”).

The trio first gained national attention in 1976 when their debut release, “Back To Africa,” hit the #1 slot on the UK Reggae Charts.  “Love Fire,” their popular anthem released in 1981, eventually became part of the reggae canon and is still covered today by many Jamaican record producers (an honour no other British band has been awarded).  The group’s 1983 Island release, Live and Direct, is considered one of the quintessential live reggae albums.

By the mid-80’s, the Aswad rhythm section of Drummie and Tony had contributed to a number of top British reggae hits by such artists as Janet Kay, Smiley Culture, Trevor Walters and Trevor Hartley.   Later in the decade, the band became known for their adventurous fusion of such different musical styles as dancehall, funk, hip-hop and dub.  Their catchword “fresh” soon became a favourite in Jamaican dancehalls.

After a series of successful singles and albums on Island and CBS, Aswad earned international acclaim with their reggae version of “Don’t Turn Around,” a song previously covered by both Luther Ingram and Tina Turner.  “Don’t Turn Around,” released on Island in 1988, sailed to the #1 slot on the UK National charts and was the most-played record on French radio.  (A similar pop version of the song was recently an international hit for Swedish group Ace Of Base).

Over the years, Aswad’s recordings have found them joining forces with a variety of artists, including Dennis Brown, Maxi Priest, Hugh Masakela, Steely & Cleevie, Shabba Ranks, and Sly & Robbie’s Taxi Gang.  The band has toured extensively, playing to packed houses in such diverse locales as London’s Royal Albert Hall and Montego Bay’s Reggae Sunsplash to West Africa, Israel and Japan.

In 1994, Aswad captured a host of new fans with the release of Rise & Shine, a recording which garnered the band’s first Grammy nomination for “Best Reggae Album of the Year.” Rise & Shine spent four weeks at the #1 slot on the CMJ New World chart and garnered a Top 10 slot on the Billboard reggae chart.  The album was also a major hit in the UK and Japan, where it produced a #1 single, Shine, boosting worldwide sales to more than 600,000.

Aswad continued to build on its impressive track record with the 1995 release of Rise & Shine Again which features all but one of the tracks from the Grammy-nominated album, plus five bonus tracks, and DUB: The Next Frontier, the band’s first dub recording in more than a decade.  As Vibe Magazine noted, “Aswad seems set to shine for years to come.”

The band were enlisted as producers for the re-recording of the Prince Buster classic Whine & Grind which was used for the LEVIS TV commercial.  Whilst not visually featuring the act the single achieved Top 20 chart status in the UK.  It was during these sessions that the band decided upon the concept for their album “Roots Revival”.

“Roots Revival” reunited Aswad with classic songs from the Reggae songbook including Caution from The Waiters, Boom Boom Carnival (1998’s official Notting Hill Carnival Anthem) and Peace Truce from The Gladiators.  The album also included several new songs including the first single Follow plus The Best Times Of Our Lives, which featured vocals from Arab music superstar Cheb Maim, a cover of Invisible Sun, a collaboration with Sting on The Police classic, previously only available on the X-Files movie soundtrack.

1999 was a big year for Aswad, but the new millennium brought even bigger things for both founder members Drummie Zeb and Tony Gad.  2000 saw Aswad celebrate their 25th anniversary along with a specially recorded live album “25 Live” and UK tour.  The band also received the prestigious, and much coveted, Outstanding Contribution To Black Music at the fifth MOBO Awards held in October.

Aswad released an album “Cool Summer Reggae” out on Universal Records the first single “Shy Guy” (a Diana King cover) is feat. Easther Bennett (of Eternal).

Aswad, after more than 25 years, are still the purveyors of the UK reggae scene and will continue to be way into the next millennium.

Reggae group

For the Record…

Emerged on 1970s British Reggae Scene

Hit Number One with “Don’t Turn Around”

Changes in Reggae Music

Selected discography

Sources

After 25 years and two dozen albums, Britain-based Aswad has become of one reggae’s institutions. Not only has the band outlasted almost every other band to emerge from the vibrant London reggae scene of the 1970s, it has also survived numerous personnel changes over the years. The group even avoided the pitfalls of succumbing to its own success; after securing a number one single, Aswad continued to develop its style regardless of its presence on the charts. Known for its energetic live shows, the band has also sustained its popularity with an extensive tour schedule in Europe, Japan, and the Americas. For its longevity alone, Aswad ranks among the most notable reggae bands, as well as one of the most commercially successful.

Developed in Jamaica from the 1960s onward, reggae mixed traditional Caribbean rhythms, a prominent bass line, and often socially profound lyrics with elements of American jazz and R&B. In Britain, where many of the island’s immigrants had settled after World War II, independent record companies brought the latest reggae releases to Jamaican expatriates. By the mid 1960s homegrown British reggae bands, such as the Cimarons, had sprung up among the immigrants and their children. Largely ignored by commercial radio and

Members include Brinsley “Dan” Forde (born in 1952 in Guyana), vocals, guitar; Angus “Drummie Zeb” Gaye (born in 1959 in London, England), vocals, drums; Donald “Benjamin” Griffiths (born in 1954 in Jamaica); Courtney Hemmings; George “Ras Levi” Oban (left group, 1980), bass; Tony “Gad” Robinson (replaced Oban), bass.

Formed group in London, England, c. 1974; released first, self-titled album, 1976; scored number one single “Don’t Turn Around,” released Distant Thunder, 1988; released Rise and Shine, 1994; released Big Up, 1997; released Roots Revival, 1999; released twenty-fifth anniversary concert album, 2001.

Addresses: Record company —Ark 21 Records, 14724 Ventura Blvd., Penthouse Suite, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, website: http://www.ark21.com. Website — Aswad at Ark 21 Records: http://www.ark21.com/as wad/indexold. htm.

the major records labels, it was not until the mid 1970s that reggae began to be heard on a significant scale outside of the Anglo-Jamaican community in Britain.

Formed around 1974 in London, the group Aswad was one of many bands that emerged during the fertile period in British reggae music. Deriving its name from the Arabic word for “black,” the group initially performed with five members. In addition to mainstay Angus “Drummie Zeb” Gaye on drums and vocals, the band included George “Ras Levi” Oban, Courtney Hemmings, Donald “Benjamin” Griffiths, and Brinsley “Dan” Forde on lead vocals. Forde was perhaps the best-known of the members at the time of the band’s formation. As a child actor, he had appeared in several British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) programs. Over the years, the group’s lineup would change several times. By the 1990s, Aswad was a trio consisting of Gaye and Forde, joined by Tony Gad after 1980 on bass. In the late 1990s, however, Forde also left the band, and Aswad carried on as a duo.

In its first incarnation, Aswad reflected the multicultural, immigrant environment that made British reggae somewhat distinct from its island counterpart. After all, most of its members came from different countries: Gaye was born in London, Forde in Guyana, and Griffiths in Jamaica. Reflecting this diversity, the members found influences in Jamaican styles such as ska and rocksteady, precursors to reggae, as well as American jazz. Like many reggae artists, however, the band’s lyrical output often focused on themes of struggle and survival in the midst of racial hostility. The band’s first single, 1976’s “Back to Africa,” referred to a longing for an idyllic mother land, while the follow-up single, “Three Babylon,” was a statement against police brutality.

With its signing to Mango Records in 1975, a division of Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, Aswad became the first reggae group from outside Jamaica signed to the renown label. A pioneer in his own right, Blackwell had facilitated the development of reggae in Britain in the early 1960s by producing some of the leading reggae artists in Jamaica and importing their records to the émigré Jamaican community in Britain and around the world. By the 1970s, Island Records was recognized as the premier international reggae label, a fact that established Aswad’s credibility with reggae audiences from the start.

With “Back to Africa,” Aswad found immediate success as the single hit number one on the British reggae charts. The band was also in demand as a backing group for visiting Jamaican reggae stars, including Black Uhuru and Bob Marley. Aswad also took part in the creative alliance between reggae and punk rock at the end of the 1970s, performing with New Wave acts such as the Police and Elvis Costello. With reggae’s popularity at an ebb in Britain after 1980, however, one of the group’s outstanding releases, 1981’s New Chapter, sold poorly despite the critical approval. Searching for direction, the band went back to its roots, recording some old Jamaican dancehall standards before pushing on with more mainstream pop efforts.

Aswad’s previous experimentation with jazz fusion, R&B, and various Jamaican styles had led some critics to question their commitment as bona-fide reggae artists. The band’s breakthrough success in 1988 seemed to confirm this skepticism. Taking a tune co-written by prolific American songwriter Diane Warren—best known at the time for penning hits by De-Barge, Laura Branigan, and Michael Bolton—Aswad’s version of “Don’t Turn Around” hit number one on the singles chart in Britain in early 1988. The group followed the chart-topper with another hit co-authored by Warren, the top 20 single “Give a Little Love.” In similar fashion, Aswad’s 1988 album Distant Thunder hit the top ten on the album charts in Britain.

Firmly established with mainstream audiences in Britain, Aswad continued to score on the charts with hits such as “On and On” in 1989 and “Next to You” in 1990, yet reggae purists continued to criticize the band for becoming too pop-oriented. In a 1994 Billboard interview to promote the release of Rise and Shine, Gaye acknowledged that some Aswad fans had not approved of the band’s crossover appeal. “They were saying those albums were OK, but that our older projects had more true flavor…. For the last few albums, we had been recording at the most expensive places in London. For Rise and Shine, we decided to record in a place that had a certain atmosphere that we were looking for.” The change in venue helped Rise and Shine recover some of the band’s old fan base while maintaining its mainstream popularity as the single “Shine” hit the top 30 in Britain. Rise and Shine also proved extremely popular in Japan where Aswad became one of the most popular international artists of the 1990s. Rise and Shine was one of the biggest-selling albums in Japan in 1994, in part because Aswad allowed Sony Records to press a domestic release of the album for the Japanese market, a rarity for an international artist in the country.

The changes in Aswad’s musical direction were reflected in the reggae world itself. As Gaye commented in a 1994 Billboard interview, “Music used to have a real message. It’s still youthdriven music, but a lot of the newer forms—hip-hop and house and dub—changed reggae.” In particular, according to Gaye, the use of new technologies in the studio took the feel of modern reggae far away from its roots: “A lot of kids out there today can’t play the [reggae] beat, so they use computers to create them.” For all its mainstream success, Aswad remained firmly identified as one of the great British reggae groups, along with Steel Pulse.

Summarizing the band’s accomplishment upon the release of its Reggae Greats album in 1998, a Q magazine reviewer noted its “rightful place in the history books as one of the few reggae bands to make a lasting impact on a mainstream (i.e. white) audience,” while reviving the old criticism of Aswad as lacking in authenticity. The fact that Swedish pop group Ace of Base had an international number one hit with a remake of “Don’t Turn Around” in 1994 had done little to restore the band’s reputation. Still, after more than 20 years of varying degrees of success, the members of Aswad had outlasted most of their original colleagues and many of their critics. With Brinsley Forde’s departure from the group, Gaye and Gad continued with the 1999 release Roots Revival, which included cover versions of the Bob Marley songs “Caution” and “Thank You Lord,” in addition to a contribution from Sting on the group’s rendition of the Police song “Invisible Sun.”

On August 22, 2000, Aswad performed a concert in London that marked the band’s twenty-fifth anniversary, a tribute that was recorded and released the following year as 25 Live: 25th Anniversary. Although it had not achieved commercial success in the United States, where urban and mainstream radio programmers typically ignored reggae releases, Aswad remained a popular concert draw in Britain, the Caribbean, and Japan. Despite a lack of recognition after its initial period of critical acclaim, the group also maintained an eager fan base willing to stick with the band throughout its musical and personnel changes. As a Q reviewer commented in October of 1999, “The future for Aswad’s breezy, lightweight reggae looks fairly bright.”

Aswad, Mango, 1976.

Hulet, Mango, 1978.

New Chapter, Columbia, 1981.

Showcase, Mango, 1981.

Not Satisfied, CBS, 1982.

A New Chapter of Dub, Mango, 1982.

Live and Direct, Mango, 1983.

Rebel Souls, Mango, 1984.

To the Top, Mango, 1986.

Renaissance, Stylus, 1988.

Distant Thunder, Mango, 1988.

Crucial Tracks: The Best of Aswad, Mango, 1989.

Next to You, Alex, 1990.

Too Wicked, Mango, 1990.

Firesticks, Alex, 1993.

Rise and Shine, Rhino, 1994.

Rise and Shine Again, Mesa, 1995.

Dub: The Next Frontier, Mesa, 1995.

Greatest Hits, Alex, 1995.

Big Up, Atlantic, 1997.

Roots Rocking: The Island Anthology, Island, 1997.

Roots Revival, Ark 21, 1999.

Millennium Edition, Universal, 2000.

25 Live: 25th Anniversary, Paras, 2001.

Broughton, Simon, et al., editors, World Music: The Rough Guide Volume 2, The Rough Guides Ltd., 1999.

McAleer, Dave, The All Music Book of Hit Singles, Carlton Books, Ltd., 1994.

Billboard, July 2, 1994, p. 22; January 28, 1995, p. 57; August 5, 1995, p. 57; July 17, 1999, p.37; August 19, 2000, p. 73.

Q, October 1995; September 1998; October 1999.

“Aswad,” Ark 21 Records, http://www.ark21.com/aswad/indexold.htm (June 23, 2001).

Aswad are a British reggae group, noted for adding strong R&B and soul influences to the reggae sound.[1] They have been performing since the mid-1970s, having released a total of 21 albums. Their UK hit singles include the number one "Don't Turn Around" (1988) and "Shine" (1994). "Aswad" is Arabic for "black". They are three-time Grammy Award nominees.[2]

The members of Aswad are UK descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean. They attended John Kelly/Holland Park School. Aswad was formed in 1975 in Ladbroke Grove area of West London.[3]

The original members of Aswad were guitarist/vocalist Brinsley "Chaka B" Forde, drummer/vocalist Angus "Drummie Zeb" Gaye, lead guitarist/vocalist Donald "Dee" Griffiths, bassist George "Ras" Oban, and keyboardist Courtney "Khaki" Hemmings.[4] Aswad were the backing band of Burning Spear's 1977 Live album, recorded at the Rainbow Theatre in London. Other contributors included Vin Gordon, and Karl Pitterson.[5]

Initially, the band produced music in the roots reggae vein, with members contributing songs individually and with Forde acting as the band's principal songwriter. The band's dynamic soon began to change however. Shortly after the release of their self-titled debut album in 1976, Hemmings left and was replaced by Tony "Gad" Robinson (the only time in the band's history where a departing member would be officially replaced by an incoming musician). The band then released their second studio effort, Hulet, in 1978, before Oban departed the band in 1979, with Robinson taking over the position of bassist as well as continuing his role as keyboardist. The following year saw Griffiths depart, leaving Forde as the band's sole guitarist.[4] During this early period in the band's history they were distinctly different from Jamaican reggae acts, in that they wrote songs that dealt with the issues surrounding the experiences of black youths growing-up in the UK;[4] such as "Three Babylon" and "It's Not Our Wish", and the powerful jazz-influenced instrumental "Warrior Charge".

Once the band's line-up had stabilised into the trio of Forde, Gaye, and Robinson, Aswad followed a more commercial reggae style, gaining a wider audience with the New Chapter album (1981). They then followed this with the Michael Reuben Campbell-produced A New Chapter of Dub LP which was a dub of the entire New Chapter album. Not Satisfied was a London roots-reggae album released in 1982. In August 1982, Aswad played live at Meanwhile Gardens on the Sunday of the Notting Hill Carnival; the resulting live album Live and Direct is a faithful record of that event, where they played a live dub set. "Love Fire" gained wide recognition when it was used as the backing rhythm for Dennis Brown's "Promised Land".

Among Aswad's catalogue of hits is "Don't Turn Around", a UK No. 1 hit in 1988,[6] originally recorded by Tina Turner as a B-side to her "Typical Male" single. They followed this up with UK No. 11 hit "Give a Little Love",[6] and a reggae-flavoured rendition of "Best of My Love", first popularised and written by The Eagles. In 1989, they contributed the single "Set Them Free" to the Greenpeace Rainbow Warriors album. In the same year, they performed together with Cliff Richard the song "Share a Dream", recorded the previous year, at Wembley Stadium as part of The Event (16 and 17 June 1989). Their next single, "Shine", was released in 1994 and was a big hit in much of Europe. Another track was the upbeat 1998 remake of The Police's "Invisible Sun", performed with Sting.

The band also hold the distinction of having played with each one of the ex-Wailers.

The band has toured extensively, playing in diverse locations from London's Royal Albert Hall and Montego Bay's Reggae Sunsplash, to gigs in West Africa, Israel and Japan.[7]

Aswad underwent their first line-up change in sixteen years in 1996, when Forde departed the band for spiritual reasons, leaving Gaye as the only founding member. Once again, the remaining members opted not to seek to recruit a replacement musician, and thus Aswad became a duo of Gaye and Robinson. With the exception of a brief reunion with Forde in 2009 for the Island record label's 50th-anniversary celebrations,[8] the band's line-up remained the same until Angus Gaye’s death in 2022. Gaye died on 2 September 2022, aged 62.[9]

Aswad released their final studio album to date in 2009, with City Lock. They released the singles "What Is Love?" and "Do That Thing" in the same year.[10]